


Unremarkable, Utterly So

by miss_nettles_wife



Category: The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Genre: Alice and Mattie are briefly mentioned but not featured, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Bounty Hunting, Canon Typical Violence, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), M/M, Third Person POV, blaster riffle, cybernetic limbs, its star wars someone has to lose a hand, passive character, post jedi civil war, vauge explanations for force stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 08:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13807707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_nettles_wife/pseuds/miss_nettles_wife
Summary: Charlie Davis is unremarkable, utterly so. Kind of a shame he fell in love with someone who was the exact opposite of that from half a galaxy away. Probably a good thing he's always been able to roll with the punches.





	Unremarkable, Utterly So

**Author's Note:**

> it's been...a while since I posted anything. I've been struggling a lot lately. I hope that finishing this (i started it in Nov. last year) is the start of things getting back on track. Enjoy, and leave a comment if you feel so inclined.

There is nothing remarkable about the moon Charlie Davis was born on.

Located in the arse end of space, the moon orbited an uninhabitable planet and contained only one people. As far as moons went, his was more built up than most, the infrastructure was sound and they were in no present danger of going extinct. They also sacrificed a child to a giant lizard god yearly, but that was much beside the point.

Indeed, Derianian is an unremarkable moon, which suits Charlie Davis, an unremarkable man, perfectly.

Norm Davis first arrived on Derianian on a mission to collect a force sensitive lizard creature for further study back at the Jedi Academy on Dantooine. He fell in love with the soon to be Shirley Davis on sight, and quickly sired himself a son.

Shirley had dreams of being a beautiful poet who travelled in luxury from planet to planet preforming for dignitaries. She abandoned those dreams to support her son through working for her mother’s dress making business. Mostly left to his own devices, Charlie Davis learnt how to pickpocket any man, shoot outdated Republic issue blasters at empty canisters, and play Pazzack.

His father returned years later, just like Shirley said he would, and he spends a whole week with Charlie. Charlie thinks he is amazing. Charlie also learns about the Jedi, his father is one, and he wants to be one too, despite his apparent lack of Force sensitivity. He wants to join his father in space, to whizz around in ships, and leave this tiny, ugly little moon behind. He wants to visit far off places, and he wants to taste exotic food. His mother tells him he’s a dreamer. His grandmother tells him he’s just like his mother. His father tells him that he can, if he tries hard enough, and for little Charlie Davis, that’s enough.

Norm sires his second illegitimate son that week, Ray.

From almost the day he is born, Ray is Force Sensitive. He throws things around the little bedroom that he and Charlie share, he is impossible to feed, and he makes messes wherever he goes. Charlie is totally enamored by him. His mother is too, she has to be, because she mostly forgets her older son exists after that. She’s taken by the child that looks just like his father, who she’s desperately in love with, rather than the one who looks just like her, who she despises.

Charlie dedicates himself to brotherhood as surely as he dedicates himself to learning how to use the Force. Perhaps he was just desperate for some of Ray’s sensitivity to rub off on him, but looking back, he is certain that it was love. He loved his brother dearly, and as warmly as the distant sun their little moon orbited. He protected him from what he could in their mother’s absence, but the truth of the matter was that Charlie was only a child himself, and though he was a mature child, there was only so much he could do. He could not, for instance, stop his brother being taken.

Their father returned for Ray. He did not return for Charlie, despite his pleas, first announcing his own force sensitivity, and failing that, appealing to his father’s need for someone to care for the child. His father replied by laughing at both offers, and telling Charlie that he should look after his mother, and to come find him when he’s an adult, because the republic always needs soldiers.

The house feels very empty afterwards, and Charlie, not particularly interested in his schooling, befriends fellow loner Rose Anderson. She’s nice, and she has an uncle who is a Jedi. Or was it a Sith? He doesn’t remember. In the one hour a day that it doesn’t rain on their moon, they sit out by the creek and she reads him short stories off of her favorite datapad. He thinks that if anyone is going to get out of here, it will be her. She is so cool.

Bernie Thompson is an off worlder. A tall man with white hair and a blossoming business. He’s different and exotic and his mother is drawn straight to him. He finds her, and their little world charming. Charlie finds him repulsive; he has no real evidence to back up his gut reaction, but nothing to disprove it either. He and Rose look the man up at the little terminal inside of the library and find his criminal record. His mother doesn’t seem to care and she and Bernie marry by the end of the month, marriage had always suited her and this one was no different.

Norm is plenty rich enough to care for both Charlie and Shirley; so she gives up working, despite her skill. Charlie had been hopeful that this would give her more time to spend with her admittedly lonely son. It does not, instead she spends all day putting on nice dress and makeup and reciting poetry in front of the mirror. Promptly, she and Bernie make two more children together, which Charlie dutifully cares for, but he misses his father. And his brother. He loves these new babies, loves their chubby little faces, and their grabby little fingers. Loves their soft hair, and the smell of powder that follows them wherever they go.  Most of all, he loves that they are not Force sensitive. But they grew up into children who no longer needed him.

He never warms to Bernie, despite the mans attempts. He teaches Charlie how to fly his little ship, how to cheat at Pazzak, and attends all his school presentations, but he is not and cannot be Norm Davis, Charlie’s real father. He was convinced for many years that his father would come back for him, that it was a mistake, that he was the son of a Jedi so he had to be Force Sensitive and as soon as he could figure it out, his father would take him away with him. Bernie is nice about it, he still gets Charlie his first blaster when he turns ten, but he’s not Charlie’s father.

Matthew Lawson returns to the moon after being exiled during the civil war. To save Rose from a fate of being fed to a giant lizard, he sweeps her into his ship, and takes off, leaving the planet behind. Charlie came too, at Rose’s insistence. He’s grateful to get away from his stepfather as soon as he can, which is to assume Bernie and his mother would even notice his absence in the first place.

It was very kind of Matthew to take him with him, since Charlie had no visible talents, force sensitivity, or blood relation. But Matthew Lawson always seems to pick the winner, and in this case, the winner was Charlie, when he doesn’t miss a single shot he takes out the top turret of Matthew’s ship. They might have been blown into space dust otherwise.

Rose is prideful and overjoyed that Charlie had proven his worth. Matthew wants to see if his sharp shooting stretches to regular guns too. (It does)

They went to Na Shadaa; Matthew wants to get lost, and the kids are stuck with him. Unfortunately for Matthew, he does not get lost he in fact gets unlost, and captured by bounty hunters who want to find and destroy the last of the Jedi. This leaves Charlie and Rose alone on the planet they didn’t know with no money, or flying skills.

But Charlie is nothing if not resourceful. He plays Pazzak well enough to earn a small sum of money every couple of days in some of the shadier locals. It’s not much, but it keeps them in food. But neither of them want to stay on Na Shadaa. Charlie wants to find his dad, and his brother. Rose wants to find Matthew.

It is also on Na Shadaa that Charlie begins having strange dreams. They all seem to revolve around another boy about his age who requires his assistance. Charlie does not know the boy, but he learns that he was a Jedi in training prior to the Jedi Civil War. His name is Danny. The dreams were Danny attempting to seek out help in the Force; to complete his training, so he can protect the woman he lives with, not his mother, but maybe an aunt? It’s hard to put it all together again when he wakes up to nothing but shards of what might have been memories.

Rose cannot offer any help to him on the subject, which is unfortunate but expected. Unexpectedly he loses Rose too. The overseer of the refugee level where they had been living for the last year has been made aware of a skilled sharpshooter living among his delegates. Charlie is brought before him, and Munro makes him an offer he cannot refuse (because he’ll be killed if he does). Charlie is to be inducted into his personal smuggling crew, and Rose will be given a marginally better life than she might have had otherwise. It’s a massive sacrifice, since one only join’s Munro’s men for life, but at least now he has a purpose. He’s managed to prove his mother and Bernie wrong, he is useful for something. Admittedly, it’s not the thing he wants to be useful for, but beggars cannot be choosers.

He doesn’t tell her goodbye, cannot bare too. She’s old enough that she’ll be okay on her own, and privately, Charlie asked the women who lived in the refugee sector if they would make sure that she is okay. They promise they will. Charlie can’t validate the worth of their promises but it’s the best he can do. The last time he saw her, he was careful to memorize every inch of her sweet face. He left a note so she would know how and where to get the money from Munro, and left.

Danny notices the change in him, in their nightly meetings, and inquires about it. Charlie divulges no information, which Danny at least appears to understand. He likes Danny a lot, and when life gets hard (which is does quite often, especially when Munro wants him to become a bounty hunter as well) dreaming of Danny is the only thing left to keep him going. He strongly suspects Danny is going through something as well, if the bruises that start showing up on his slightly hazy dream face are anything to go by.

He learns how to speak in the language of traders and spacers. He has to if he wants to live. He has near miss after near miss. He keeps going until he gets good at it. Smuggling is difficult, but being a bounty hunter is a lot harder than that. He isn’t an assassin, he really isn’t. He doesn’t set out to kill people, at least, not at first. Not until Munro realizes that he’s wasting Charlie’s aptitude with blasters. So off he goes, old pistol strapped to one thigh, slug thrower strapped to the other, knowing full well that he will have to kill.

He doesn’t tell Danny, though he’s sure Danny knows. Over time, he’s become use to the feeling of someone poking around in his memories. When he gets to deep or looks at something Charlie doesn’t want him to see, he develops a way to think about Pazzak and bore him away. He knew Danny had his best interests at heart, but even so, he doesn’t want him to watch Charlie shoot a dignitary in the head and look at the man’s grey matter splattered all over the wall in his bedroom.

Charlie’s missions get more and more dangerous, Munro can sense that he’s not invested like he used to be, Rose would be a grown woman by now, freed from the refugee section to go live her life. There is nothing left for Charlie back there. The only thing left for Charlie is completing missions, which he’s fine with. Not the fantastical life he had dreamed off, but it was something. That was what mattered, that he had something. He was useful for something.

He was fitted with a healing implant too, when they became safe for non-humans to use. Charlie had never had much to compare his human-ness too, but looking now it was clear he wasn’t. He was too pale; slightly blue. His fingers were too nimble. Humans were more angular, and had only one set of eyelids. Norm was a human, Shirley not. Charlie landed somewhere in between.

 The implant went into the back of his neck, and was long and rectangular. He ran every scan he could think off to make sure there were no tracking devices, even though he knew there were none. Munro would never risk a smuggler being found out, at least until someone invented a tracker that could avoid all scanners. He doesn’t like it much, it feels odd and heavy. It’s meant to sit level with his skin but no matter how much time he spends tending to it with salty water, Bacta and damp compresses, the skin around it is always red, inflamed and painful.

His relationship with Danny changes. One night, Danny conjures up a ballroom and fills it to the brim with people in fancy dresses and military medals stapled to their chests and they danced for hours, every dance they could think off to take their minds of their pains. Another, they went swimming naked in pond from the reserves of Charlie’s memory. Charlie did something like this in real life, one afternoon, after a fight with Bernie, he took off into the bushland. He stripped his clothes and went head first into the icy water determined to feel something. With Danny, the water is warm and he is close. The imaginary sunset paints blue lights on his skin. Danny taught him how to use a lightsaber, even though they both knew he would never use one. He taught Danny how to play Pazzak, though his moral compass is too finely tuned for cheating.

Charlie always wins.

The final mission that he ever went on for Munro was a bona fide suicide mission. It was well known in the circles Charlie frequented that being sent after a Jedi mean only one thing: death. So he packed his things up, and loaded them onto the ship he won in a Pazzak game (he cheated, but the ship was so damaged it took him over a year to get it working so who was the real criminal?) made sure that his will, should anyone deign to read it, listed that his belongings were to go to Rose, should she be findable. Then off he went, to see to the reports of Jedi activity on Dantoinne. He figured that he could use the time to investigate Danny a little further, find out if he really was a lonely Force user, or if he was something Charlie’s mind made up to deal with things.

He didn’t much care for Dantooine. It reminded him greatly of his homeworld, minus the rain. It takes too long to get anywhere and the human farmers were all suspicious of everyone who landed here. Not that he blamed them, he was a suspicious person.

The enclave is in ruins, but he can see why Jedi would be drawn here. Even he, a mere mortal, can feel the Force here, seeping out of the very ground. Trekking through, he fought off Kinrath, dismantled old droids and navigated the halls with surprising ease, like he’d been here before. _Or Danny had_. He doesn’t think about it much- He’s purposely chosen not to tell Danny about this, that he hunts his kinsmen for a bounty. Danny wouldn’t understand, or at least Charlie doesn’t think he would.

Charlie did find his Jedi. Dressed in grey and black with a cloth tied up over his lower face and glasses on his eyes to protect him from the dust in the library. Charlie can’t see his face, and nor can he see Charlie’s, given that he’s wearing a yellow vacuum mask to prevent any ‘Jedi Mind Tricks’ being used for an easy escape.

They scuffled, his fighting style is familiar, too familiar. His lightsaber tickles his mind, familiar. His downfall in this fight is actually stupid, looking back on it. The Jedi’s shirt comes untucked from his pants in one particularly brutal smash of lightsaber onto Charlie’s guarded forearms. It tingles all along his bones and up into his shoulders. His eyes are transfixed to the small scrap of skin, tan, warm looking. He has seen it, he has touched it, he has kissed it, but where? Where? (he knows where) The momentary distraction is enough for the lightsaber to catch him on the side of his face, burning a hole in the mask, and his face.

The sudden searing pain was enough to land Charlie face down, unable to move. He might have heard his name out on the fringes of his mind, but not before he passes out.

He awakens alone in the library. He does not go looking for Danny, his Danny. If he just fought him, then he doesn’t fancy a rematch, and he doesn’t want Danny to see him like this if they didn’t. Instead, he slunk back to Munro like a mooka with its tail clipped.

Munro promptly had him fitted with a cybernetic eye, not top of the line, clearly, but still not completely outdated. The doctor that put it in did what Lucien would later refer to as a hackjob. As far as eye went, it was serviceable, but too big for the socket, pressing up into his eyelids and aching for hours at a time. He learned to live with it.

Munro sent him on the same mission a week later, determined to either have him killed or have a jedi. In that week, he did not dream of Danny once, which was not to say that he didn’t try. He did. Many times. But every night the same dream, just him alone in the furious rain of his home planet, desperately calling Danny’s name out into the abyss. Having dreamed of Danny almost daily for fifteen years now, his absence is jarring, like he’s missing a hand, or a foot. Danny must have found out about the Dantooine trip. What did that leave Charlie with, then? Nothing.

Back he goes, fully aware that he is staring death in the face. He’s lived his best life. He was useful. He loved Ray, and yes, he was sad he never got to see him again, it was probably for the best, all things considered. At least he got to say goodbye to Ray, though. Danny is just gone.

He returns to the library, new vacuum mask in place and to his shock, finds the same Jedi reading. They scuffle for a second time, and miraculously, Charlie gets the upper hand. He angled his blaster at the man’s head, but before he pulled the trigger, he ripped away the face coverings. He just had to see.

Danny. Danny. Danny.

He cannot kill Danny, even if he wanted too. And boy, does he want to. In those confusing few seconds, the idea of having his mind back in his own hands and making a run from Munro sounds incredibly appealing. He could never, and for the second he entertained it he thought he was disgusting. He threw the weapon aside, and removed his face covering. They sat very still, watching each other. When he was sure it was safe, Charlie slid off of Danny’s hips.    

_‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’_

It drifts into his mind out of nowhere in Danny’s voice. He tries to think the same back, unsure if he could. He must have been able too, because after a long time, they embraced.

Danny brought him back to his home. He lived with his aunt and her husband. They were nice people.  They lived on a farm hours away from anything, isolated and quiet. They farmed native fruits and vegetables, and they spend a lot of time outside. The nearest neighbor is an hour away. It suits Charlie perfectly.

The first thing Lucien does is tell him his eye is a hackjob, as if Charlie didn’t know that already. He offers to take it out; Charlie denies. Jean is sweet, she offers to show him out to make meals out of proper food rather than the ration packs of quick dried meat and powders Charlie has been eating for the last fifteen years. He helps with the farm work, determined not to be a free loader.

Communication was occasionally difficult. He’d never had trouble talking to Danny in his mind, but looking back it was probably foolish of him to presume Danny spoke the language of his little moon home planet. In real life, Danny’s galactic basic accent cannot fit over the shapes of his name, and it just sounds incorrect. Danny, conversely, had simply presumed Charlie spoke basic like him. He did, sort of.

Charlie spoke a number of languages with reasonable skill, but none of them perfectly. He’s also prone to mistaking words from one language with another. Danny and Jean spoke basic, but not the one Charlie is aware of, which he supposes is thanks to their Dantooine accent. Rather than attempt to teach Danny the peculiars of his language and his people, he simply adopts what the Force translated his name to for Danny as his proper name. Charlie Davis.

Whatever free time that he and Danny have they spend it together. They talk through the Force, and hold hands like a couple, a real couple. Charlie has never had a real relationship to speak of. Never even slept with anyone. Danny is warm and welcoming, and Charlie loves every piece of him. They spend hours picking through the empty plains of Dantooine together. They talk, argue, sing and dance together alone in the quiet.

Danny is a sweet boy. Force sensitive to a fault, and struggling to control it at the best of times. He’s too on edge to meditate most of the time, though it was through failed meditation that he was able to find Charlie out there in the vastness of space. He is training under Lucien, to be the next of the Jedi. The next in line. To continue the legacy. Charlie does not know how he feels about that. From what he knows of Jedi, they are not meant to form worldly attachments; he’s not sure what he’d do if Danny had to let him go. He does not linger on it. Danny smells like a warm afternoon, or hot rocks landing in water. His skin is soft, warm and pleasant to the touch. Danny likes to feel his skin too, Charlie supposes that he finds the texture as pleasant and exotic as Charlie does his.

He also sees things that he didn’t see prior to coming here. For example, he notices for the first time, when they are swimming naked in a waterfall they found miles away from anything and anyone, a seam running along Danny’s wrist. They do not have much in the way of boundaries between them, so he grabs hold of Danny’s hand and examines the mark carefully. It is dusk out, and his cyber-eye (as Danny calls it) is struggling to keep up. He realizes then that it’s a seam for plasti-flesh and Danny has a cybernetic hand. Danny uses his fingers to peel the covering off, and show Charlie the grey hand underneath. He’s fascinated by how smooth it is, and how Danny does not seem to have any problems with skin around the join. Charlie takes his time kissing each finger and examining each joint.

Danny trains daily. Charlie sometimes follows along, but not always. He comes back covered in bruises and tired. Supposedly, this is normal, he and Lucien do a lot of sparring. When Danny tries to meditate, Charlie sits nearby. He can meditate, but he doesn’t enjoy it. The Force doesn’t speak to him, not the way it does to Danny. Sometimes, while Danny meditates, Charlie will perform routine maintenance on his hand, supposedly the touch is calming. He doesn’t understand it, but he doesn’t think it’s mumbo jumbo either. The enclave is a popular spot where they try and uncover still readable datapads. At the back, there are books, real paper books. Charlie thinks they are the most interesting, but he doesn’t speak the language, so he has to use the diagrams to understand.

When they aren’t wandering the plains and they aren’t working on the farm, and Danny isn’t training, they lie on the floor of Jean’s little farmhouse and watch holofilms projected onto the ceiling by her old-fashioned two dimensional projector. Danny loves action films, with dashing leads and exciting adventures. Charlie likes the mystery films. Sometimes Lucien and Jean join them and they watch comedy films. It is a peaceful life, Charlie enjoys it greatly.

He liked Lucien a lot. He was warm and fatherly. Perhaps there was something in his history, a missing child of his own, which inspired him to take hold of the fatherless child he was presented with. He doesn’t speak of his own history with Charlie, only with Jean, which is fine. Charlie does not particularly fancy knowing it. Lucien is kind, and that is what Charlie likes about him most. He does things and he does not expect Charlie to give him anything back. He is constantly offering to do something about his eye. Charlie is wary of him training Danny to be a Jedi, people follow Lucien without a second thought, and he is halfway convinced that if Danny was asked to leave him by Lucien, he would. When he brings this up, Lucien simply replies that nothing but death would convince Danny to leave him, and even then, he’d find a way. Charlie suspects that Lucien feels the same about Jean.

They don’t sleep together. Which is not to say they don’t _sleep_ together, they do share a bed. There is only two rooms in the farmhouse. Danny’s bed is not nearly big enough for two men, but they make it work. Charlie likes being close to him. He’d be fine if they never went further, and sometimes he thinks it might be because Danny is human and human plus non human relationships are frowned upon in most cultures. It could also be that Danny does not find him attractive.

Where Charlie comes from, relationships between men are frowned upon, because such couplings do not (usually) result in children that could potentially be fed to the giant lizard god. Humans here, at least to his knowledge, are not as hard wired. At least, no one has said anything to them when they made their rare trips to the trading post arm in arm.

Danny later explained that humans, at least, humans of his variety liked to marry prior to ‘making love’ to someone. Charlie could understand that, logically. But in his experience, humans didn’t wait, most of the humans he’d encountered preferred not to. But then again, every human was different, and there were so many varieties of humans, the idea that Danny could be one that waited was not an especially difficult to believe option.  He also caught a stray thought from Danny ‘We should go to Derainian for our honeymoon’ and he finds that very comforting indeed.

In their bed at night, bodies tangled in the permanent fight for space, Danny whispers to him that he’s had a force vision, and that Charlie will die someday. Charlie knows this, everyone dies.   
“I’m going to kill you.” Danny whispers, heavily distressed by the idea. Charlie is not so worried, though he maybe should have been. Dying by Danny’s hand seemed like a perfect, if dramatic way to go out.

They are pulled apart by the universe, because the universe, for whatever reason despises Charlie for all it’s worth.  The farmhouse is attacked by a group of bounty hunters who have heard that there were Jedi here. They managed to escape with their lives, but just barely. Charlie killed a man he knew, a man he used to be friends with, in the name of protecting Danny. It was not the last time he’d be forced to do that.

Living on Dantooine becomes untenable. Lucien decides that he will take Danny to the unknown regions and Charlie and Jean should vanish as best they can. Jean and Danny agree with him. Charlie begs to go with them, just like when he was a child. Without Danny, he had nothing, and was nothing, but rules were rules and Lucien made every rule about Danny’s training. They took a shuttle to Telos, and from there, they’d figure something out.

Danny stood opposite to him, in the landing bay. They both have a bag at their feet, he will be going one way, Charlie and Jean the other. This was safer. Danny took both of his hands firmly and looked into his eyes. They spoke through the Force, clear and bright.

_‘As soon as my training is complete, I’ll find you.’_

_‘I want to come with you.’_

_‘It’s better this way.’_

_‘How can this be better?’_

_‘You will be safe.’_

_‘Without you, there is no me to be kept safe.’_

_‘You lived for fifteen years without me.’_

_‘Fifteen years too long.’_

_‘Please keep Aunty Jean safe.’_

_‘You know I will.’_

They don’t say goodbye, Charlie hates goodbyes anyway.

He and Jean leave a couple of days later after Jean is able to convince a local doctor, Alice Harvey, to care for the farm in her absence. He doesn’t know what exactly qualifies her to look after a farm but he trusts Jean’s instincts on this.  Charlie changed the identification on his ship, which for the last three years has been gathering dust in the hangers, and off they went. Neither of them knew exactly what to do when they left Dantooine. Jean had been there her whole life, and without Danny, or a job, Charlie was generally directionless.

It is Jean who suggests that they should try and find some people from his life, starting with his father. So they did. It took roughly an hour to find him, turns out that the Republic kept pretty good death records from the Civil War. Charlie’s father, Norm, was shot and killed at Malachor Five. There was no body to speak of, and going to the dying planet to look would be suicide.

He’s not as saddened as he should be. That was for certain. Jean pats his arm and she obviously thinks he’s more sad than he is. In fact, he’s not sure he feels much at all. Which is bad, Norm Davis was his father, who he loved. Even with his absence from Charlie’s life, he still loved him. Or thought he did. His mother might want to know, if she didn’t already. If she wasn’t busy with Bernie.

How about Rose, then? And Matthew? Where are they? This one is longer, but from what he can make of it, Matthew was sold into some kind of fight based slavery, and Rose, after turning eighteen, had fallen off the face of the universe. But he had a sneaking suspicion that where he was, she was.

Off they went, to unearth this piece of Charlie’s history, and to help if they could. The slave trade was barbaric, and Charlie hoped some day the galaxy at large would realize this. When they arrived, they were not shocked to see Matthew was fighting that night. Charlie does not know the protocol for purchasing slaves on this planet, but between them, he and Jean should have the credits. Charlie has money saved up from when he did jobs on the side for Munro, and Jean from the farm. A retirement fund was of no good to her if she had no one to retire with, she had said.

It was a dirty, back end little planet Charlie once remembers being pegged as the next Na Shadaa. But it never turned out like that; this one was too small, and too disgusting. But the slave trade and so called ‘slave fighting’ was popular enough to keep most of them in money. Charlie wishes, not for the first time in his life that he was in tune with the Force, like Danny, and he could find Rose and Matthew easily.

Instead he is stuck with the old fashioned way. A bit of a wander and some well placed questions. He’s glad to find that he hasn’t lost his touch from his bounty hunter days. Finding the girl who always hung around near The Killer (so called because he once killed an opponent) was a little harder than that. Rose didn’t want to be found, not by him or by anyone else. This wasn’t the life he wanted for her. He doesn’t want to believe that he gave up everything so that she could come to this miserable little rock and fade into the background. He wanted her to take on even the very fabric of the universe. Not this.

As he suspected, Rose was where Matthew was, sitting by his cage, her skirt muddy and torn. The first thing she did, after seeing Charlie for the first time in eleven years is punch him in the face. Matthew tells her off for that and Charlie cannot but help feel a little vindicated. Before he can even offer to help, she informs him, brutally, that she hadn’t needed him before, and she didn’t need him now. He can see why she would think that; he did leave her, abandoned her for all intents and purposes. He tries his best to give the shortened version of the past and why he did what he did. It doesn’t matter much, she’s made up her mind and there was no changing it.

He missed her, a lot, actually. She didn’t miss him, but what else was new. They argued briefly, but Rose was in no position to turn down the offered help. And with that, it was organized that this was to be Matthew Lawson, the king of the ring’s last fight. It didn’t cost as much as Charlie thought it would, apparently credits are a lot harder to come by out this way.

They watched Matthew fight; Charlie realized that he had a bad leg but was still able to easily beat his opponents. Charlie wishes quite desperately that he was strong like that. That he could have protected Danny like that. That he could have protected Rose, and his father and his mother and brother and Lucien and Jean and himself. That he could have done anything at all.

They left as soon as they could. Charlie notices on the way out that Jean has a bounty on her head, so they have to change the way she looks. New hair, new eye colours, thicker lips. Illegal beauty modifications are a surprisingly booming industry around here. Charlie considers getting altered as well, but the idea of someone touching him….Made him uneasy. He didn’t like being modified, not by Munro, Lucien or anyone else. He could have control over that one thing at least.

They need a cover story. Charlie contacts an old associate, one who wouldn’t rat them out, Ned Simmons, to have him come up with a fake wedding certificate for Jean and Matthew, and fake Republic birth certifictes for himself and Rose. Matthew becomes Bosco Skinner, Jean becomes Tamera Skinner, Rose becomes Sophie, Charlie becomes Mika. Their cover story is that they are a family of smugglers.

They leave the planet without issue, and sitting in the little common room watching Rose and Matthew chatter, Charlie struck with the notion that he has given up so much to make Danny’s life easier. He finds the sound of his native language comforting, but when he tries to speak it himself, his tongue is slow, his vowels are sloppy. As a child, as someone only half Derainian, the other half human, there had been a level of separation between himself and his peers, some thought he must be avoided, others were jealous of his perceived exoticness. Hearing Rose say his name, his proper name, strikes something deep inside him he cannot place.

Ironically, for all the work they put into their cover story, it does not take them long to get found out.

The Navi computer locked up halfway to Onderon, and seconds later they were pulled into a tractor beam. Before Charlie can even begin to explain what was happening, or make a plan, a sudden pain in his head sends him face forward into the carbon steel floor.

He should have been more careful. He should have, at some point in the last three years, run a scan on the eye to see if it was a tracker in disguise. Anger coils deep inside him. He should have known better. He was the worldly one, who knew this stuff, who’d been to so many places and seen so much. Instead, he let himself feel so much pain for so long when he didn’t need too, because he was a stubborn bastard.

Munro explained everything to him. He’d been waiting for the price of Jedi to go up, and he’d take Charlie’s two from him. What’s worse, was when he threw Jean into the holding cell with him, he asked if ‘he knew’

Of course, Charlie had to asked ‘if he knew _what´_

To kick him while he was down, Jean ended up explaining the entire purpose of Charlie’s entering Danny’s life.

It was all a setup, by Lucien. Danny needed someone to help him focus his energy, someone he had a close relationship with. They couldn’t leave the farm for fear of the bounty, or worse, Danny losing control in public. Charlie was just one miserable soul in millions that Lucien picked out because he was ‘what Danny liked’ when he was thirteen.

What was worse, Charlie was not even his first choice, his first choice had been a young girl named Mattie, but after it became apparent that she was Force sensitive, he had to cut it off with her, least she seek them out for training. No, they needed someone tied down, Force blind and miserable. Charlie fit the bill.

The end goal was, well, it was the library, the first time. Danny would be betrayed by the one he loved most, and he’d have to kill him. Or at least, break it off. That betrayal could have been anything, but when Charlie took up with Munro, it was like the Force was agreeing with him. Following that, Lucien would have had the perfect Jedi soldier, to carry on his legacy.

“Charlie, you have to understand, Lucien was different after the end of the war. He wasn’t the man you know. Danny needed you then, he needs you now. He needed the bond with you, to keep him sane.”

He didn’t reply, just tucked himself away in a corner and tried to wedge his fingers into his eyesocket under the cursed cybernetic. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

“Then you came to the farm house, and he loved you. He loves you. Like a son.”

He keeps ignoring her. What sort of father was that, then? Setting his son up for a fall. His heart aches furiously in his chest, thudding against his ribcage. They’d seen the world through his eyes, they’d seen Danny through him. He was the one who set them up for a fall. Danny would never forgive him.

In his mind, he can feel Danny tugging furiously on their bond. Concern and worry filters through. Charlie has long since stopped questioning the nature of their bond, and the limits it could stretch too. He has a new purpose now, to protect Danny. He attempts to send calmness through his mind, to relax him. It’s okay, it’s fine, it’s okay. I’m okay, I’m fine. Stay where you are. Don’t come here. Stay away.

Days tick by, he feels very second. He tries to continue telling Danny to stay away when he’s awake. Jean, seeing that he will not talk to her, has crawled up onto the bunk. It is on the fifth day of silence that the cell door turns off, and a man stands there, tall, broad shouldered, dark hair, dark eyes.

Charlie looked up, and he could see the child that he had rocked to sleep in the night. The child who he watched lift cups and plates. The child that their father came back for.

_“Brother.”_

Ray has an accent Charlie cannot identify. He speaks in their language, the one Charlie has missed. Being called brother makes his heart pound dangerously against his rib cage. He has wanted this; dreamed of this for years.

“ _You don’t go by your name anymore. Why did you abandon your culture? For this Jedi boy?”_

Charlie doesn’t reply.

_“Mother worries about you.”_

For what it was worth, Charlie has never thought his mother did not love him. She had to love him, she wouldn’t have kept him otherwise. Would have given him to the lizard. But simply loving him did not mean she didn’t love her other children more. He hadn’t expected her to be worried, but it did not surprise him.  He can’t make words form in his suddenly dry throat.

_“It doesn’t have to be like this. I will take you to Munro; we will sort this out. You might even be able to get a cut of the profit for bringing the boy here.”_

Charlie stood, ignoring Jean’s protest and walked towards him across the cell. Ray’s face breaks into a grin, it about breaks his face in half and it warms distant and cold parts of his heart. Parts he hadn’t even know needed heating. He held out one hand, and Ray offered his face so Charlie may look at it. Charlie’s hand came just short of touching him, only to reel back, and suddenly deliver a full palmed smack across the face.

This action causes his eye to send bolts of electricity zooming through his body, burning him from inside out.

 Worth it.

He doesn’t see Danny when he is out cold. Usually, when he dreams, he can feel Danny in the distance, pulling on an invisible rope tied around his waist, but not since he left. He misses seeing him, even in dream form. He longs to hear Danny’s tongue roll over the sounds of his native language. _Homesick_. Seems strange to be homesick after nearly twenty years, but he misses the pouring rains of his home planet. He misses his brothers, and, Maker help him, he misses Bernie. For all his talk of his father, it was Bernie who taught him how to cheat at Pazzak. It was Bernie who taught him how to fly a ship. It was Bernie who taught him how to negotiate a deal.

He snaps awake at the thought. In his mind, he can feel Danny trying to comb through his memories for answers. Bastard, he promised he wouldn’t do that anymore. Charlie started to play Pazzak in his head, and aware he’d been caught, Danny stops. He feels a gentle, warm, what is wrong? i want to help. talk to me. In his mind. Danny, he loves Danny. He simply tells Danny he loves him and to stay away. Let him have one more day; who will it hurt?

By the tenth day, Munro grows tired of waiting, and the torture begins. He passes Rose and Matthews cell on the way past, they both blame him, he can feel it. The first thing they do is take out the eye, with no pain relief. Charlie’s body tries to pass out, but they pump him full of something that lights up every nerve with fire. He aches. When the drug does wear off, the last thing he feels before falling asleep is Danny.

_‘I am coming.’_

Munro’s greatest mistake was underestimating Lucien Blake. Charlie felt it when they arrived on the ship, or, he felt Danny at least. He doesn’t much understand how proximity to one another affects their bond, but like most things pertaining to Danny, he doesn’t question it too much.

He thinks about how he would have told his mother he was married. He’d have taken a holo of the event (because they wouldn’t wait) and then go to her and Bernie. She would make them traditional soups and Danny would like it. Danny would say his name, his real name. They would have been so happy, perhaps that is what hurts him most. He’s never felt more happiness then when he was with Danny. He was bight, light. Like the sun, and just as blinding. Charlie was just Charlie. Not special, not even slightly.

The purple electro wall shuts down, all of them in the holding cells do. Charlie ran, ran as fast as his aching legs would carry him. The weapons locker with their confiscated stuff is nearby. He all but tears the door off its hinges. Inside, he finds his meager collection of items. A holo of his father and brother, his heavily modified blaster, a couple of shiny crystals on a string Danny gave him. That was all he had to show for his life.

The battle took place on the bridge. It was blaster fire and lightsaber clashing. Ray’s lightsaber is yellow, just like their fathers. Charlie can’t even tell what side he’s fighting on. Danny is downed halfway through the battle, and Charlie is quick to protect him to the best of his abilities. He pops off shot after shot, only halfway bothering to properly aim.

It’s Rose who deals the final blow to Munro, the girl is wicked with a vibroblade.

And then it was over.

Charlie sent Ray home to their mother with the holo video. Danny came too. Charlie suddenly feels alone, very alone.

Lucien and Matthew seem to know each other, which is not a surprise to Charlie; it seems like all Jedi know one another. They are speaking animatedly, like old friends. Rose, disinterested, is speaking with Danny. They would make a nice couple, Rose and Danny. And he could choose her; rather than have her forced upon him by a legacy obsessed mad man.

That was right, wasn’t it? It had to be. He can’t expect Danny to stay with him anymore, it’s not fair on either of them. Couldn’t be. He didn’t know what life there was for himself without Danny. A week ago, he hadn’t thought there was one. He could probably go back to bounty hunting. He still had contacts in the business. That would be a suitable life for him. Alone and away from the struggles of people. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it.

He turns his back, preparing to leave, but Danny runs over to grab him by the arm. They’ve been separated less than a year, but it feels like an entire lifetime has gone by in the interim. He seems excited, and Charlie hates to be the one to bring him the bad news.

Danny has brought him a ring. It’s silver, with a polished stone on it. Danny explained that it had come from Charlie’s homeworld, and he had one matching. Charlie could have known that without ever being told. He held the ring in the palm of his hand, it was warm from being close to Danny’s body. Danny is halfway through giving Charlie an impressive run down of how he managed to import stones to the middle of No Mans Land, when Charlie notices that his entire cybernetic hand is missing from the wrist down. The connecter is damaged beyond repair.  Danny must have felt him think it, because he catches Charlie’s eye at the same time.

‘ _I love you.’_

Charlie does not respond, he doesn’t know what to say.

“I love you.”

He says it in Charlie’s language, it’s poor, and almost unintelligible. But it sounds like home. Danny is his home. He could break it off, if he really wanted, really, he should break it off. But he doesn’t, of course he doesn’t. He couldn’t. Not when Danny is looking at him like he hung every single star in the night sky. He’s weak for Danny Parks. Will always be weak for him.

“ _You learnt that?”_

_“Lucien said that I should be able to speak more than one language.”_

_“So you learnt one that was useless?”_

_“It’s not useless if I can use it to speak with you.”_

“ _Do you know?”_

_“Lucien told me when we landed.”_

_“Do you still want to get married?”_

_“Yes. I do. Of course I do. I love you.”_

And that was that. Charlie let Danny put the ring on his hand. It fit perfectly onto his finger, shining metal and beautiful to behold. Danny has one matching.

They were married a few days later, neither of them even bothered to have their ruined cybernetics fixed. They selected a Republic planet that delivered marriages easily, and had no restrictions regarding human/non human pairs. The wedding was very brief, they didn’t bother with vows or anything fancy. They barely even bothered to dress up. Charlie wore the same red synth-leather jacket he always wears, Danny looks every bit the farmers son in his torn up pants and asymmetrical shirt. No one is invited except for Matthew, Rose, Jean and Lucien. No one else needed to be invited, not that there was anyone else to invite.

The whole affair took about forty five standard minutes, and off they went, now with a document claiming that they were bound to one another, as if they hadn’t been prior. Danny is still talking animatedly about going back to Charlie’s home, and Charlie can’t find a reason not to, so they ended up in the common room together, composing a message to his mother, including the holo Jean had taken of the ceremony.

_‘Mother-_

_It has been some time since I last wrote to you. I’m sorry about that. I hope that this message finds you well. I miss you often, and I think it’s finally time that I should apologize for running off the way that I did. It was cruel of me._

_But looking back, I find it difficult to be very sad of it, because I recently married the man that I have been seeing for the last few years. I suppose you could say I take after you, he’s human. His name is Danny, and I is by his request that I worked up the courage to send you a message. He’d like very much to meet you, and spend time on Derainian. So would I._

_I’ve included the Holo from our wedding taken by a friend of ours with this message, if you’d like to view it._

_I would understand if you don’t want to hear from me again, but I hope you can forgive me._

_Forever your loving son and his husband,_

_Charlie and Danny-‘_

Danny needs to get his hand fixed, he’s been putting on a brave face, but he can’t hide his pained thoughts from Charlie. Lucien finally gets to operate on one of his charges, and Charlie watches the entire procedure from Danny’s side. He was surprised by how much of the cybernetic was imbedded in Danny’s arm. The good part of watching the procedure gave Charlie a good idea how the thing worked, should it require an upgrade or repairs at any point where they might be away from Lucien.

As far as Lucien went, Charlie didn’t know if he forgave him for his meddling, but it was very hard to stay mad at him when he remembered that he helped him find Danny. It was also in this operation that Lucien explained how it was that Danny lost his original hand. Supposedly, the first time he attempted to build a lightsaber, he set the kyber crystal incorrectly and it exploded when he attempted to turn it on. That was exactly the sort of thing that would happen to Danny, so Charlie has no reason to not believe him.

The new arm is slightly nicer than the older one, the synth skin is softer, the motion ranger is greater. It also doesn’t creak like the last one did, which is probably on account of the fact that this one isn’t made by Lucien from spare parts.

Following that, Lucien offered to put in a new eye for Charlie; but he declined. At least for the moment, he didn’t want anyone to meddle with his body. That is something he will always enjoy, having ownership of himself.

He receives a message from his mother

‘ _Charlie and Danny-_

_I was overjoyed to find your message in my inbox. Of course I want to see you, please come home._

_Everything else can be discussed when you arrive._

  * _‘_



Simple and to the point; he has no idea what else he would expect. But he’s glad she wants to see him, and Danny. He’s excited to show his mother Danny, though he doesn’t know how he’s going to explain Lucien’s meddling quite yet.

He’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

They do eventually take their honeymoon. Neither of them have jobs or any reason to wait after Danny is well, so off they went. They took Charlie’s tiny piece of garbage ship that had begun to feel like home, leaving the others on Lucien’s much bigger and much fancier ship.

It’s a long trip from where they ended up, but then again it probably would have been a long trip from anywhere; Derainian is in the middle of nowhere in the outer rim, Charlie had to program the Navi computer himself, since there are no known routes there. He and Danny spent the trip playing pazzak and watching holofilms. Charlie hadn’t even noticed at the time, but he really, really missed having someone to share his bed with.

Derainian is exactly how he left it. The sky is still grim, the people are still blue, and they still seem to be intent on worshiping the giant lizard. Most of the people are the same. He took his time walking through the middle of town, stopping in to see some of the people he used to know, and buying the same fruit he ate as a child, and was greatly amused by the fact that the fruit Charlie found pleasantly textured and a little sweet, Danny spat out and proclaimed ‘the most bitter thing he’d ever put in his mouth’ and ‘terribly grainy’.

Eventually, they make it to his childhood home. The stone walls are just how they always were. He raps twice on the door, and it is opened. His mother does not hesitate in hugging him. Charlie hugs her back just as tightly. They sit in the main room, which is mostly unchanged. The participation trophy Charlie got as a child is still sitting on their mantlepiece. Overall, it’s nice. Homely. Secretly, and maybe even a little selfishly, Charlie hopes to someday settle down somewhere with Danny, and adopt some children on their own, but he doesn’t dare let it become anything more than that.

Lucien still has his grip tight around Danny, and at the flick of his hand, could rip him away and ensure Charlie never sees him again. But for now he gets to be happy, and that’s the most important bit. For the moment, he has more pressing things to think about, his mother has accepted them, and that was what he had hoped for.  Bernie seems threatened by the presence of another off worlder, even though Charlie has been gone so long that he might as well be an off worlder himself, but not particularly cruel about it. Ray at least seems to have relaxed since the last time they spoke. One of his other brothers left as soon as he could, and the other is not accepting at all. Charlie is not bothered by it, he’s spent his life isolated for one reason or another, be it his half human heritage, his career path, or being alone on an isolated farm.

Danny, however, is very upset by it, and he cannot understand it when Charlie hesitantly explains that the word his brother has been using to refer to them all afternoon is a derogatory insult. In fact he kicks down the door to his brothers bedroom and hurls insults of his own at him until Charlie can drag him out onto the back verandah and chastise him. Charlie can only imagine it, having your door broken down and being screamed at in a language you don’t speak by a man you barely know. A very intimidating man.  Danny promptly turned his anger on Charlie, and demanded to know how he could tolerate being treated like this. Charlie just shrugged through an answer Danny finds displeasing and he stalks off into town.

Charlie lets him. His mother offers him words of comfort that bounce around inside his head. He argues with the brother who said the slurs. He waits for Danny to come home. He supposed that this was what his life was now. Following Danny from place to place, waiting for him to finish his Jedi training. Waiting for him to come home. Waiting for things to be okay. Just. Waiting. He doesn’t mind waiting so much.

Eventually what passes for dawn ripples through town. Danny, wet and miserable, comes slinking home. He spent the night following Charlie’s old routes through town and trying to keep himself under control. Charlie’s just glad he came home at all. Danny hugged him, told him he loved him, said he was sorry. Charlie said he was sorry too, even though Danny said that he didn’t need to.

They spent the day wondering around town, Charlie showed him all the places that he went as a child and Danny enjoyed trying the food and looking at the datapads, even if he didn’t speak the language. Charlie was well aware that this is probably the last time that he will come here, and that’s okay. He’s seen what he needed to see, done what he needed to do. This planet wasn’t his home. The whole universe was, and so long as he had Danny, he was of the opinion that he was going to be okay. Things had to be.

Charlie spent his whole life looking for his purpose. He was a brother, and a caregiver, a bounty hunter, a smuggler and a farmer. None of those fit quite right. But his new purpose was looking after Danny. He wasn’t a Jedi, or like his father. But he was with a Jedi, protecting him. Exactly where he was meant to be. And he was okay with this too. This was probably his last purpose, his last and most important job. He’s probably going to die protecting Danny, and that’s just fine by him.

So at the end of the day, Charlie said goodbye to his family, and promised to write. They went back to the hangers, and boarded his little ship.

 “I guess we should go back to Lucien and your aunt now.” Charlie said, not particularly wanting to do that. Now he’s tasted what it’s like to be alone with Danny, beholden to no one, he doesn’t want to taste anything else.

“We should.” Danny agrees, his voice is warm, his basic perfect. “I don’t want to.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then maybe we should go somewhere else.”

“Where would we go?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“So long as I’m with you, I don’t think it matters.”

So Danny put Manann into the Navi computer.

“I’ve always wanted to see how they harvest Bacta.” He said, dropping comfortably into the co-pilot chair.

And that was that.


End file.
